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Mary Kingsley Quotes

It is my melancholy fate to like so many people I profoundly disagree with and often heartily dislike people who agree with me.

It is my melancholy fate to like so many people I profoundly disagree with and often heartily dislike people who agree with me.

Mary Kingsley
Fate, People, Opinion

the grim, grand African forests are like a great library, in which, so far, I can do little more than look at the pictures, although I am now busily learning the alphabet of their language, so that I may some day read what these pictures mean.

Mary Kingsley
Mean, Library, Looks

West Africa today is just a quarry of paving stones for Hell, and those stones were cemented in place with

Mary Kingsley
Stones, Today, West
1899 West African Studies.

I most carefully confined myself to facts and arranged those facts on as thin a line of connecting opinion as possible.

Mary Kingsley
Lines, Facts, Opinion
Mary Kingsley (2013). “West African Studies”, p.9, Routledge

the African leopard is an audacious animal, although it is ungrateful of me to say a word against him, after the way he has let me off personally ... taken as a whole, he is the most lovely animal I have ever seen; only seeing him, in the one way you can gain a full idea of his beauty, namely in his native forest, is not an unmixed joy to a person, like myself, of a nervous disposition.

Mary Kingsley
Taken, Animal, Ideas
Mary Kingsley (2010). “Travels in West Africa, Congo Français, Corisco and Cameroons”, p.543, Cambridge University Press

[Responding to repeated questions about traveling in Africa without a husband:] I am looking for him.

Mary Kingsley
Husband, Responding

It is a generally received opinion that there are too many books in the world already. I cannot, however, subscribe to any Institution that proposes to alter this state of affairs, because I find no consensus of opinion as to which are the superfluous books.

Mary Kingsley
Book, World, Opinion
Mary Kingsley (2013). “West African Studies”, p.187, Routledge

There is one distinctive charm about fishing - its fascinations will stand any climate. You may sit crouching on ice over a hole inside the arctic circle, or on a Windsor chair by the side of the River Lea in the so-called temperate zone, or you may squat in a canoe on an equatorial river, with the surrounding atmosphere forty-five percent mosquito, and if you are fishing you will enjoy yourself.

Mary Kingsley
Ice, Fishing, Circles
Mary Kingsley (2013). “West African Studies”, p.75, Routledge

One immense old lady has a family of lively young crocodiles running over her, evidently playing like a lot of kittens. The heavy musky smell they give off is most repulsive, but we do not rise up and make a row about this, because we feel hopelessly in the wrong in intruding into these family scenes uninvited.

Mary Kingsley
Running, Smell, Giving
Mary Kingsley (2010). “Travels in West Africa, Congo Français, Corisco and Cameroons”, p.244, Cambridge University Press

If you see a thing that looks like a cross between a flying lobster and the figure of Abraxas on a Gnostic gem, do not pay it the least attention, never mind where it is; just keep quiet and hope it will go away - for that's your best chance; you have none in a stand-up fight with a good thorough-going African insect.

Mary Kingsley
Fighting, Flying, Mind
Mary Kingsley (2013). “West African Studies”, p.9, Routledge

Ambas and Bobia Islands are perfect gems of beauty. Mondoleh I cannot say I admire. It always looks to me exactly like one of those flower-stands full of ferns and plants - the sort you come across in drawing rooms at home, with wire-work legs. I do not mean that Mondoleh has wire-work legs under water, but it looks as if it might have.

Mary Kingsley
Flower, Mean, Home

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